Westworld
“Westworld” Season 1 did not focus on the guests' experience, according to Jonathan Nolan, because they concentrated more on the hosts. HBO

With the big bucks they pay just to get inside Westworld, what exactly do the guests feel when they enter and leave? Do they feel happy and satisfied? Unfortunately, the show “Westworld” did not really answer these questions. Save for William (Jimmi Simpson) and Logan (Ben Barnes), the show did not focus on any of the guests’ experiences.

Show creator Jonathan Nolan told TV Line that the guests’ experiences weren’t their priority in Season 1 nor will it be a highlight of Season 2. However, they did try to incorporate it in the storyline at first. “We talked a lot about how the experience would feel for a contemporary guest going into the park. We laid out a lot of that logic in the writers’ room,” he said.

However, when it became clear that the season would highlight the hosts’ stories and backstories, he said, “it didn’t feel appropriate to spend too much time illuminating how unreal this place is, because the hosts believe in it so much up until that horrifying moment when they realize that it’s an artificial world. So we didn’t get bogged down in it.”

One of the show’s stars, Jeffrey Wright, who plays both host Bernard Lowe and Arnold Weber, told The Daily Beast that he hopes Season 2 would maintain its ability to create unsuspected twists and turns. “I think this show, from the beginning, kind of rises to that other level when narratives collide and fuse into something we didn’t expect,” he said. “Those moments for me are just so wonderfully satisfying and thrilling.”

However, it will still be a long wait before the sci-fi show makes its way to the small screen. Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter that they need more time to craft the Season 2 storyline.

“We knew for ourselves that going forward, the production is enormously challenging and ambitious, and so is the writing. So we said very early on that we wouldn't be able to turn this around every year, and knowing full well that that's been a time-honored tradition in television,”

“Westworld” Season 2 will return to HBO in 2018.

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